


Sand

by Indybaggins



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Depressed John, Disability, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Gen, M/M, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 02:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4374236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indybaggins/pseuds/Indybaggins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s a rumble of a man, bursting at the seams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sand

**Author's Note:**

> The very first bit of Sherlock fic I ever wrote. Beta was by Jie_Jie! <3

 

 

John dreams of the scorching sun. Screaming bullets, echoing his name. 

He wakes up tangled in sheets damp with sweat. As he tries to rise there is sand in his every move, scraping his muscles raw, his hand trembles as if it’s scared for him, still. 

It’s as if he has been lying perfectly still for so long he’s forgotten how to move. 

Everything takes time. Getting dressed, eating, most of the time he doesn’t bother. The growling hollowness of hunger makes him feel lighter, as if the world will pass him by faster that way. 

He goes out when it’s unavoidable, and gets stopped by Mike in a park with no birds, no people, no grass. He feels only the creaking non-motion of his own leg, the routine of it all, the mechanism of a body alive. 

There are shards of phantom pain in his leg at every step, and stinging sweat on his brow and upper lip. He’s late for nothing, but he tries to hurry away still because people say “I’m sorry,” and “Oh, John…” with pity in their voice. There’s only so much of that he can swallow before his own words come back out towards them, angry, violent, rude. Like a building storm, he’s a rumble of a man, bursting at the seams. 

Mike offers him coffee and the warmth of something old between them in his eyes, so John tries to be kind. He doesn’t remember but he can do it automatically now, how are you, no I’m not who I was, how about the weather. The coffee tastes bitter on his tongue. 

Mike presents him with a flat mate. 

Black curls in a sterile lab, the sharp lines of the man’s shoulders and suit, the measured precision of his words. It becomes clearer, the moment, more now than all the months before. John offers something of himself when he hands this man his phone, although he’d be hard pressed to say what, exactly. His attention, his curiosity certainly, _this thing is not like the others_. 

He gets repaid by a whirlwind of impressions. John’s startled by this man’s nerve, his obvious sense of superiority; he wants to say “Who do you think you are?” He wants argue, mostly he wants to know more, about who this person is, how it is he knows what he knows. And that’s new. 

“The address is 221b Baker Street, and the name’s Sherlock Holmes.” 

That night John sleeps even more fitfully than usual. The difference is that he wants to be awake. He thinks about meeting Holmes, replays the scene in his mind again and again. He checks the text left on his phone, he googles, finds Sherlock Holmes’s website. Reads a little, closes it, opens it again, reads more. Morning comes only slowly and then the day drags on even more, time somehow growing more sluggish now that he’s aware of it. He hasn’t had an appointment with someone that wasn’t a doctor or a therapist or Harry in months. 

John takes the tube in between a blasting hot, sweating mass of people at rush hour, all trying to get home. He holds on and stares at the floor. His cane feels heavy in his hand, his palm forming a blister. He hasn’t been walking that much before. He can barely recall what he has been doing in these last few months. Sleeping, cataloguing the stains on the ceiling, the radiator, shades of grime on the walls. Using his one mug to make tea, drink, wash, repeat. Porn sometimes, even though he can’t muster more than a lacklustre spill in a tissue these days, he feels as if he owes it somehow, to his body. There - now stop wanting. Leave me alone. 

The stairs of the tube station are hell to climb. He’s slower than everyone else, and he can feel their irritation pushing at his back. Willing him to be gone, to be as fast as them or not be there at all, either be a whole person or disappear. John secretly agrees. 

Walking up to the address he’s half convinced himself that there will be a selection of flat mates. Maybe a murderer among the bunch, and that they’ve all been called here so Holmes can figure out which one it is. 

They arrive simultaneously. John slightly out of breath from the exertion, Holmes in a whirl of action - ‘ _Call me Sherlock_ ’ - and John is led up stairs again, only this time Sherlock waits for him at the top. He obviously likes this place, wants to live here, because his eyes are flickering with something like anticipation when he opens the door. 

It’s a complete mess, that’s the first thing John thinks. It smells lived in already, something chemical. There are books everywhere, crates and boxes, glassware all over the kitchen, a skull on the mantelpiece, little tables and a music stand and wooden chests. It’s eclectic, bizarre, it’s like no place John’s ever lived in. Some of the wallpaper is peeling, there are prints, clashing colours, the woodwork is old. The place is dirty but nothing some straightening won’t solve. 

John is surprised to feel that the more he looks around, the more he can see himself living here. 

He sits down on a chair that’s obviously seen its fair share of tenants, the colour faded into something unrecognisable. The cushions sink comfortably underneath his weight as he tries to imagine this place as home. It’s not hard. 

He eyes Sherlock. Not at all. 

 

-

 

A month later, John wakes with a start, listens to the London traffic outside before opening his eyes. 

Sherlock had been torturing the violin around four am, and then a couple of small explosions or possibly Sherlock throwing some furniture down the stairs - but even that he’s mostly slept through. 

John’s a sleeper, these days. Six hours, sometimes seven. Chasing after Sherlock, _running_ again, working full days only to come home to one case or another, Mycroft that wants to kidnap him for a chat, Sherlock that needs a dead pig - ‘ _Urgently John!_ ’ - shopping and going out eating and shouting matches on a daily basis… It should be exhausting. It is. 

He feels as if he is buried under things to do, feels them heavy on his shoulders, in deep breaths and angry walks though London that accomplish nothing other than to make him hurry home. 

Sherlock needs him, his patients need him. John’s body responds by settling back into itself, back into something sturdy, reliable. His leg works. His hand hasn’t trembled since he shot his first man for Sherlock - funny how he’s so sure it’s only the first - and he has no regrets. Not a single one, now. He will kill everyone that he needs to. It’s very possible that he’s as messed up as Sherlock is, or more. 

He doesn’t care. 

Sherlock, in one single day, shook the sand from his joints. Steadied his hand. Made the sun turn into London drizzle, the bullets into a gun he uses because he needs to, again. 

Sherlock gave him _life_.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
